Residential college budgets to be equalized

The notion of inequalities among the residential colleges has long been a point of contention for students. Now, while they may still argue about which college has the prettiest courtyard or the nicest gym, as far as money goes, the debate is being settled.

In the second year of a University-wide financial overhaul, members of the Provost’s Office, along with other administrators, have redistributed funds and alumni gifts in order to equalize the budgets of the 12 residential colleges. Three of the wealthiest colleges’ budgets have been reduced to match the others’, while the rest will receive funding that equals or exceeds their past budgets.

“We did what students have been clamoring for for years,” University President Richard Levin said. “We made funding more equitable.”

All of the colleges have given up some of their discretionary funds — money that comes from donations and endowments — to pay for their students’ financial aid and other general expenses, rather than study breaks and social events. Though administrators said students would largely not notice the effects of the recent financial “reshaping,” the changes are part of a larger administrative movement to control the Yale College budget more closely.

Council of Masters Chair Jonathan Holloway said the rapid growth of Yale’s endowment in the past decade magnified previously insignificant differences among the colleges’ finances, as large, college-specific alumni gifts appreciated exponentially.

“Things became so exaggerated during a decade of incredible endowment growth,” he said. “That was leading to a difference in opportunities for students.”

The new era of tighter budgets and more centralized control marks a shift from the historical model of residential colleges with their own distinct personnel, personalities and, sometimes, finances. Though the colleges’ funding is becoming more uniform, administrators say the colleges will retain the distinctive characters that are central to the undergraduate experience.

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL

Yale administrators said financial equality among the residential colleges does not mean students will lose coveted perks or college pride, especially since masters still have some freedom to direct funding according to their individual college’s needs. The amount of funding the colleges receive is tied to the number of students in each, Provost Peter Salovey said.

“Financial equity between the colleges is very important, as long as masters and college councils are free to use their budget in creative ways that make each residential college unique and special,” Berkeley Master Marvin Chun said in an e-mail.

Jonathan Edwards Master Penelope Laurans said this year’s budget reorganization gives all Yale College students comparable opportunities, but that those opportunities may not always be the same.

But one former master said he believes financial leveling may affect the uniqueness of each residential college, a quality most students covet about their on-campus communities.

“They’ll lose a lot of motivation from alumni for giving for special purposes. And I think it’ll undermine a lot of the creativity and uniqueness and colleges,” said Yale historian Gaddis Smith ’54 GRD ’61, who was master of Pierson College from 1972 to 1981. “I don’t think the colleges should all be exactly the same and have to go to the Yale College Dean’s Office for everything they do.”

Holloway said residential college masters will not truly understand the cuts’ repercussions until the end of the year. Until then, however, he said students will not notice a major difference in their quality of life. Calhoun, for example, will still hold its annual Trolley Night, though Holloway said he is working with the student activities committee to find a way to pare down the event’s budget.

“In Calhoun, we’ve still ordered our gear for freshmen, we’re still doing trips to New York City, holding study breaks,” he said. “It remains to be seen how the colleges are really going to roll out activities and events across the board. I wager you’re still going to see a lot of really neat stuff.”

FUND-HUNTING

Starting last summer, administrators from the offices of the Provost, General Counsel and Development began reviewing the University’s donations to see whether any indentures — legal documents in which donors specify how their money must be used — allowed Yale to use the money for broader purposes than before, Vice President for Development Inge Reichenbach said.

Among the endowed funds affected were student academic prizes, which administrators decided to cap at $1,000 last year. The rest of the money in these sometimes-enormous funds went toward financial aid and other general Yale expenses, administrators told the News.

Now the same process has come to residential college donations, sparking a debate over whether administrators are violating the spirit, if not the letter, of donors’ intent. Money taken from a specific college will not necessarily still benefit that college’s students, Saybrook College Master Paul Hudak said.

“I can see both sides,” Hudak said. “If an alum wants something specifically earmarked for Branford, say, there seems like there should be some way for them to do that. But I understand Yale’s point of view also — we’re really one large community, we’re not just individual colleges.”

Many of Saybrook’s fellows and alumni think that gifts made to Saybrook should stay under Saybrook’s control, Hudak said. But in a time of budget troubles, he said, the colleges should do their part in giving up some funds.

After learning of Yale’s decision to systematically reappropriate endowed funds, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 opened a review of the process last spring to make sure Yale does not violate the terms of any indentures. The investigation is ongoing, according to Blumenthal’s office.

MORE CENTRALIZED BUDGETING

The colleges are ceding some control of their budgets to the administration in other ways, too.

Administrators spent last spring shifting departments to a so-called “all-funds budgeting” approach, asking department heads to specify what every dollar will be used for in advance, instead of treating their discretionary funds as a pool of ready money.

And over the past two years, eight “operations managers” have begun working with residential college masters to help with financial and regulatory oversight. These managers report to both the college master as well as the business office of the Yale College Dean’s Office.

Though the initial plan was to hire one for every residential college, recent hiring freezes have kept Timothy Dwight, Branford, Morse, and Stiles without them.

Holloway said masters with operations managers do not miss managing the college’s budget and handling liability issues, which he described as “grueling” for academics who are trying to teach and conduct their own research.

“Masters didn’t get into the job to manage paperwork,” he said.

Residential college masters pay for study breaks, master’s teas, college trips and other social events with a combination of University-supplied funding and donations, Deputy Provost Lloyd Suttle said. Like all other departments, the colleges have had to cut back to help fill Yale’s budget gap. And like the other departments, they, too, are starting with their own income and filling the holes with Yale funding.

In short, residential college masters will need to have their spending approved by the Yale College Dean’s Office or the Provost’s Office to a greater degree than in the past.

The move to even out residential college budgets and take more administrative control over how those budgets are spent is just part of a larger shift toward a more corporate Yale, said Smith, the Yale historian.

“This is an example of a trend through almost every aspect of the University,” Smith said. “We’re becoming a highly administrative place, sort of like the federal government.”

Yet this is not the first time Yale’s central administration has pushed the colleges to become more alike, Smith said.

Before the early 1960s, Yale students were not placed into residential colleges until the end of their freshman years, similar to the house system now in place at Harvard, Smith said. Masters admitted students into their colleges based on applications and legacy status, Smith said.

The process created colleges that were known for certain types of students — Calhoun was full of “jocks,” Davenport housed many upper-class students and Timothy Dwight and Silliman, because of their closeness to Science Hill, attracted science majors, Smith said.

By 1963, the administration had instituted the residential college placement system Yale uses today. Masters and students opposed the policy shift at first, Smith said, adding that most now see the random placement system as a positive change.

“The experience of Yale College students should not be identical, but comparable, and not vary widely,” Deputy Provost Suttle said.

Comments

add1443

… what are the three wealthiest colleges?

JE09

I wonder if this would have happened if Penelope Laurans, an unqualified master (given she is not a distinguished member of the Yale College faculty) and a loyal servant of the Yale administration, were not master of JE. Yale has been trying for years to attain this sort of equity, but has faced a strong voice in JE (formerly the wealthiest college) lobbying against such efforts. As an alumnus of JE, I am disappointed to hear of this development and am concerned that it will prove detrimental to the college experiences of those to come through the doors of my fine residential college. Further, I will certainly not give to my college (as much as I would love to) out of fear that my donation will be misallocated by the Yale administration. This is indeed a sad day for many current Yalies and alumni/ae.

Anonymous Bosh

I’m with Gaddis: The Yale College (versus lower-case “college”) experience is in the details, quirks and whimsies of those who have gone before. And, yes, alumni will modify (reduce, divert) their Yale donations–I believe the numbers support that statement.

But y’all *knew* this was a’comin’. Canna have any disparity, no, no: the Harrison Bergeron-ing must continue, even at the nosebleed level, *égalité* of outcome and alla that.

Do I think this is the end of the world? Nope: just another straw. Also: *cf.* the [Robertson Fund brouhaha][1] at Princeton over “redirecting” restricted alumni funds. Better hope all descendants are DEAD! (As in, “Go Blumenthal!”)

BTW: Even the *poorest* college ain’t so poor (‘ceptin’ mebbe the two newbs).

Of *course*! This is **one** way to get the two NEW colleges some insta-funding, w/o having to go through the bother of ginning up pre-alumni support…

Sort of a mirror to government, always looking at who has what and “redistibuting” according to Central Planning diktat.

Yale12

I don’t see how anybody could be opposed to this new policy unless, like JE09, they’re simply whining that their college isn’t going to be able to give away six different kinds of free spirit gear next year. And no, this isn’t “Harrison Bergeron-ing.” Vonnegut warned about handicapping society’s best to enforce false or meaningless equality. JE, TD, and Dport students are not somehow better than the rest of us; they do not pay more than we do, and they were not put into the wealthy colleges because they are smarter or more talented than we are. Yalies sometimes get too wrapped up in the residential college system. Sure, loyalty to your college is great, but above anything else, we are all Yalies, and were I a member of a wealthier college I would certainly want my fellow Yalies to have experiences equal to mine–yes, even at the expense, perhaps, of a few free T-shirts.

MasterofJE

“Unqualified” Master of JE here, writing in response to JE09. I am indeed a loyal member of the Yale administration -as well as a 37 year faculty member of the English department – but I am also a 36 year Fellow of JE, a deeply loyal spider, a friend to every Master since Beekman Cannon, a former acting dean of the college, a member of every college Fellows committee in existence since 1975, an active member of the JE Trust, a close friend and side-by-side colleague of Master Haller, and I have fought hard for JE over the years and worked exceptionally hard in the past year to see that JE students, despite the downturn in the endowment and some smoothing of funds across all colleges, would not compromise the experience of the college. Ask president Levin about my JE stewardship. All of the great traditions of the college – including Great Awakening, Culture Draw, JECC and SAC events, commencement week, the Bates, pumpkin carving and tulip planting, the senior tastings, pizza for freshmen, Tetelman, monies for the Press and the theater, teas, and the rest are intact. We worked very very hard to see they would be. There is less gear, yes, and budgets are smaller. But with Teri’s help we have allocated the money with great care to ensure that JE students do not feel a great difference. You need not fear that monies given directly to the college, with indentures that specifically earmark them only for what you site, will be aggregated elsewhere. What can’t be touched wont be. Am I as wonderful as Master Haller? No. But we are working hard to keep the JE spirit of the college intact, the activities robust, the spiders loyal. Some of this does depend on money. But much of it depends on the spirit of the place, too, and no one will take second place to me in my hard work for that. “Unqualified” as I am, I have pledged to do my part for JE and to be its steward and anyone who has spoken with me, negotiated with me, or seen my priorities in the last two years since a tragedy put me in place and a committee asked me to continue well knows that. We welcome you back anytime, JE09, to see!

Valid crit. I was looking for a pithy shorthand on universal equalization, and Harrison Bergeron was, indeed, an imperfect fit in this case. That said: this “smoothing” is in the same vein as trying to hand money to students who would otherwise be forced to “work their way through college” (which has been deemed a disadvantage–or “underprivilege,” I suppose–versus those who need not do so. (As an aside, Yale indeed engages in “Harrison Bergeron-ing,” just more–or more overtly–at the admissions phase versus the college phase.)

All in all, this is probably a minor issue. One assumes that endowment (under)performance will be a larger factor than fund smoothing (although one wonders whether donor stipulations with regard to investment style could also affect funding levels, but that need not concern the typical undergraduate).

Also, a propos of the comment directly above, I, too, found the “unqualified” comment a bit… unqualified.

moreJE09

Ms Laurens, while I may not be as eloquent and in the know as my fellow classmate and friend, I would like to point out how ridiculous and juvenile it appears when someone with a position such as yours choses to respond to and engage in debate through a “comments” section. Even the football coaches at yale are smart enough to not respond to comments about bonehead decisions. An editorial response would have been much more appropriate for someone who is in your position. It only makes JE09 seem more on point.

Furthermore, when it came to being master of the college, you instead chose to be master of only your favorites. You never made a real effort to get to know the JE community as a whole. You spent your time with those students who you “liked” and ultimately made things worse in the community for those who did not kiss up to you. I have as much in common with you as I do Master Haller, Dean Farley, or Dean Mangan. They never once even insinuated that this was a problem, or that I did not deserve their time or attention when I approached them. The JE community is large, not just the few students you choose to embrace.

Back to the point at hand, there is little about the Yale college system that is fair. Freshman housing varies greatly by college. Pierson and Saybrook students pay the same as Berkeley students, yet their rooms on old campus do not compare. Should we demolish old campus and rebuild identical buildings for everyone to live in? The Pierson-Davenport basement, will always be the nicest because of its size, should we get rid of the wonderful place because the Calhoun basement does not offer the same amount of space? If the school is unwilling to except that having each college have different perks is alright, then why not take down the colleges and build several large formulaic structures for every person to live in. All the colleges have their benefits, and all the colleges have their drawbacks, but trying to make every college the same hurts everyones college experience.

Mikelawyr2

How do the writer and editor fail to identify the three wealthiest colleges?

This is Journalism 101. What kind of student is my alma mater admitting these days?

Spider09

As another recent JE grad, I am likewise disappointed in the announcement. I do feel that Master Laurans has done a good job in her time since stepping in. However, it can’t be a coincidence that this plan has been put into action after Master Haller of JE (replaced by President Levin’s right hand woman) and Master T in TD retired and Master G in Pierson has been [effectively forced out][1].

This centralization has clearly been planned for a long time and the financial crisis offers a convenient excuse for it (remember how Levin said he valued students’ input on the new colleges and then later said it had been a foregone conclusion?). However, once changes have been made, it will be almost impossible to go back.

Equality is a nice ideal, but as moreJE09 wrote above, there will always be inequalities in the college system. Is it fair that I couldn’t go to the Master’s Tea with Denzel Washington in Silliman because I wasn’t in the college? No, but because his daughter was randomly assigned there, like most students are Sillimanders got lucky. Each college should take pride in what it has and try to build around that. It would be one thing if the administration stated that it would be giving additional funds to less wealthy colleges to enable them to have more programs for their students; instead, they are taking money from other colleges, forcing them to cut back existing programs. Instead of a net gain, some students’ experiences will suffer.

Finally, the idea that the benefits of college endowments accrue only to their students is wrong. JE funds finance the Bates Fellowships for juniors from ANY college to study abroad. Interested students from other colleges could request to attend lunches with Master’s Tea guests. Any number of special lectures and events paid for by JE and other colleges’ endowments are open to the entire Yale community.

The idea of an equal experience for all students is both facile and impossible. It would be admirable for the university to use its funding to help enhance the student experiences in less well endowed colleges like Trumbull, Stiles, and Morse. Dipping into other colleges’ funds (which were specifically intended for them, thus raising legal questions) is not the best way to do this.

I guess Spider 09 did not read the article all that closely. It clearly says:
Three of the wealthiest colleges’ budgets have been reduced to match the others’, while the rest will receive funding that equals or exceeds their past budgets.

Branford73

I agree the college funding ought to be comparable among all of them, hopefully on a per capita basis. This doesn’t mean that each college’s experiences should be the same. There ought to be ample funding in the discretion of each college on how it wants to spend it. If there is enough for a spring trip for one college, another should be able to put together something comparable, though different. There ought not to be some rich colleges and some poor.

I see this as a totally different kettle of fish than the prize theft, er, *reduction* announced last year in which the University has decided unilaterally that individual academic achievement is deserving only of so much and no more than 1/2 of one percent* of the 4 years’ total costs in tuition, fees, room and board, even if the university contributes zero to the prize amount. ( * .53% to be more precise. $1,000/190,000)

Spider09

@ anonymous: no, I read closely. “Among the endowed funds affected were student academic prizes, which administrators decided to cap at $1,000 last year. The rest of the money in these sometimes-enormous funds went toward financial aid and other general Yale expenses, administrators told the News.
Now the same process has come to residential college donations, sparking a debate over whether administrators are violating the spirit, if not the letter, of donors’ intent. Money taken from a specific college will not necessarily still benefit that college’s students, Saybrook College Master Paul Hudak said.”

Perhaps the article is not clear in what this process entails, but what happened with prizes is that their endowment funds were used for general university funding. If the same process is used with residential college endowments, spending by the “three wealthiest” residential colleges will be restricted and money from their endowments that is freed up will go to the university. If the university is planning to increase funding to the other colleges, the most logical place to start getting the money is from the pool that has been ‘liberated’ from the three colleges.

DC10

“In the second year of a University-wide financial overhaul, members of the Provost’s Office, along with other administrators, have redistributed funds and alumni gifts in order to equalize the budgets of the 12 residential colleges. Three of the wealthiest colleges’ budgets have been reduced to match the others’, while the rest will receive funding that equals or exceeds their past budgets.”

I’m all for equalizing the budgets, but this makes it unclear as to whether or not they are redistributing the funding, or if they are cutting off the top and using the surplus to fill up the Yale piggybank.

FailBoat

I question whether that commenter truly is Master Laurans; surely, a Harvard-educated member of the Yale English department would not make the mistake of using “site” when she meant “cite”.

But what do I know? English is only my third language.

FailBoat

Many JE Spiders, myself included, are less concerned with Master Laurans’ credentials (which are impressive, even if they are untraditional for a College Master) and more concerned with the favoritism she displays. Master Haller knew our entire class by name (and Dean Farley certainly knows us all very well). Master Laurans has made no attempt to interact with those students who do not have some particular accomplishment for her to glow over and laud in a speech or special poem. She shows favor to those who have power and accomplishment, and ignores those who have not risen as high in the JE or Yale community.

Quite frankly, it’s the difference in mindset between a professor and an administrator.

Prof3

The comment about Laurens being unqualified was unkind. But her reply (if that is her) is not very honest. She is *not* a member of the faculty. She has taught some courses, but she was not hired for her scholarship, she did not get tenure, and she does not have the responsibilities of tenured faculty who are expected to teach, mentor students, do research, raise grant money, and, yes, serve on lots of silly university committees.

Her appointment is part of a sad trend: Yale is dismantling the residential college system. They will not say so, but by demoting a master’s position to someone who has been an administrative factotum, they are just making the college another administrative unit of the university. They may keep the name “college” but in 10 years these will just be dormitories.

(Tip to the News: the best way to see how power flows is to see where people report up the food chain. The masters used to report to a Council of Masters who reported to the president. Now they report to an assistant dean. No way the masters still matter.)

The Daily News completely missed real context of this “total resource budgeting.” It has little to do with money. The amounts in question as so tiny as to make the entire matter silly in that regard. And the alleged inequalities across the residential colleges are also tiny. This is really about *power*. Levin has hired a bunch of very expensive senior administrators who want to take control of every facet of the university, down to the last nickel spent by an academic department. The colleges are simply being asked to step in line.

Yale students should be very alarmed about what is happening. What makes Yale special is this hat trick we perform: it’s a first-class university that also has a first-class undergraduate education. A lot of that comes from hiring faculty and then letting them do their thing. Now we are expected to report to (read: grovel before) Shauna King and some other people who make little secret of their contempt for us. Faculty will respond to this in many ways. Some will leave. Others will “withdraw” but stay; why work hard to serve an institution that views you as an obstacle to its real mission, which is hiring more administrators? And students will suffer the most. You will find that jobs like being a Master are enormous effort. Many people are trying to do it while keep a research career going, be a good citizen in their department, raise a family etc. Yale now makes it clear that it does not value the good masters, it just wants people it can rely on to be obedient. Laurens is what you get.

Some comments have raised a legitimate issue, which is whether alums will still give money when Yale does not honor the spirit of the donor’s intention. I think this is an important issue, but the symbolism is far more important. Why give to Yale when it is no longer Yale, but instead a division of Pepsi-Cola?

JE09

@Prof3

Perhaps the word “unqualified” was interpreted differently than I intended. You do an excellent job articulating what I meant–traditionally masters have been academics. Laurans is “unqualified” in the sense that she is not an elite academic (there is no doubt she is accomplished).

I applaud you for bringing to light the salient issue in this matter–that of control–which students and alumni often fail to see. I hope your point serves as a springboard for debate around the Yale campus and that students recognize the implications of centralized institutional control. Small, independent communities foster creativity and independent thought. Centrally run institutions often breed a scary form of corporate culture and are not accepting of dissent.

Yale12

This is not an effort to make all colleges the same in by any means, although the many JE grads here seem to be trying to paint it as such. To go back to “Harrison Bergeron,” there is a difference between “sameness” and “equality.” While Yale is not trying to make all colleges the same–the same facilities, the same experiences, etc., etc.,–they are making a valid and honorable attempt, at least in my opinion, to make them equal. The best way to do that is by making sure that all colleges get relatively equal funding; they should be able to with it what they will, more or less (though whether they’re being allowed to do so is another issue entirely). So while I agree that the pursuit of sameness among residential colleges is not very worthwhile–I enjoy the uniqueness of my college and its traditions, and I will always be loyal to it–I don’t think there’s anything wrong with equality, especially since we all come here as equals.

Branford73

@Prof3,
If what you say about the shift of power from faculty to administration is true, it makes me profoundly sad. My perception of my Yale time is that the faculty wielded a lot of power in University governance. I noticed this was not true in my later observations at Emory, Wake Forest and Duke, all pretty decent universities, and they suffered in comparison on that factor alone.

Incidentally, in comparing those universities I also noticed that inspired leadership from the university’s president was more valuable than administrative acumen in the overall morale and pride of the student body. I had high hopes for Yalie Brodhead at Duke, and his speeches can still inspire. But his collapse of leadership over the lacrosse fiasco was a huge failure. For the clot of students who were enrolled then and are alums now, he’ll never recover.

hsheffield

How sad this is…Kingman Brewster used to complain about ‘grim pre-professionalism’ on the part of students but this seems like ‘grim pre-homogenization’ of the Yale experience on the part of administrators. The individual quirks of each college were part of the charm of Yale. It’s part of what makes us Yalies recall our college experience with such affection.
Centralization will almost invariably lead to a lack of investment in the residential colleges. It’s a waste of energy to be too invested in something you can’t control.
Is this Yale’s version of Civil War?

Yalie08

Firstly, Laurans is perfectly qualified to be Master and is a very impressive academic.

Secondly, equality across the colleges is not a bad thing. But it is also hard to attain. Freshman housing is different. Some of the colleges have excellent housing, others don’t. Some renovations went well while some (esp. JE’s) were a disaster. Some colleges have salad bars, some don’t. I think President Levin and Master Lauran’s attempts at equalization are a good start, but they should continue to work for meaningful equality across the colleges. Still, it is somewhat hard to stomach this initiative as it is so intimately connected to Master Laurans, whose connections to Book and Snake and varsity recruiting bring into question her serious commitment to equality amongst students at Yale.